Is It or Isn’t It—A Synagogue?

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Israeli archaeologist Ehud Netzer claims he has found the oldest synagogue building in the Biblical Land of Israel, near Jericho. Not everyone agrees that it’s a synagogue, however.

Meanwhile, Italian excavators Virgilio Corbo and Stanislao Loffreda say they have found a synagogue about as old near the Sea of Galilee, at Migdal (sometimes called Magdala). Netzer, however, doesn’t think the Migdal building is a synagogue at all.

We’ll present the evidence and let you decide.

It’s not easy identifying a synagogue dating to the time when the Temple still stood in Jerusalem (the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.). Yet we know synagogues existed then. We have abundant literary evidence that they did, including the New Testament (see for example Matthew 12:9, 13:54; Mark 3:1, 6:2; and Luke 4:15). A plaque called the Theodotus Inscription, found in an ancient cistern in Jerusalem, refers to a synagogue that was built in the city as early as 100 B.C., but so far the building itself has not been found. Pre-destruction synagogue buildings have been found, however, at Masada and Herodium, two desert fortresses built by Herod the Great (37–4 B.C.). According to Netzer, the Masada structure was converted to a synagogue when the Zealots fled there during the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66–70 A.D.).¹ We’re reasonably sure it was a synagogue at least from the time the Zealots occupied the site because sacred manuscripts, including scrolls of Biblical books, were found there, buried under the floor. The synagogue at Herodium is much like the Masada synagogue.

In addition, it’s possible that there is a pre-destruction synagogue at Capernaum, where, according to Mark 1:21 and Luke 4:33, Jesus preached and taught. The handsome synagogue that tourists see when they visit Capernaum today is much later (the usual figure given is fourth to fifth century A.D., but some say it’s earlier). According to the Franciscan excavators, beneath this synagogue is an older one, though only some 4-foot-thick walls and a contemporaneous floor have been found beneath the above-ground structure.^a The argument is that synagogue sites are rarely abandoned, and if there had been a public building (with such thick walls) beneath the exposed synagogue, it too was probably a synagogue. Finally, a synagogue on a mountain peak in the Golan Heights called Gamla was destroyed by the Romans early in the Jewish revolt, so it too must have been in existence earlier (built, according to the excavators, in the Herodian period).^b

Later synagogues are much easier to identify. For example, the synagogue tourists see at Capernaum has a menorah, the seven-branched candelabrum, carved in one of its column capitals. Later synagogues, beginning in about the fourth century A.D., had mosaic 052floors that often depicted scenes from the Bible or an ark for the Torah or a Jewish inscription.^c

But none of the pre-destruction synagogues have any of these clear Jewish indicators²—no menorahs, no depictions of Biblical scenes, no inscriptions identifying donors with Jewish names.

But if they weren’t synagogues, what were they? Clearly, they’re public buildings of some sort. This brings us to another problem: What is a synagogue? When we think of a synagogue today, we imagine a place where Jews go to pray. But that’s a problem, too. The best view is that at before 70 A.D. a synagogue was more like a 053community center. It was a place where groups of Jews assembled for social functions and political matters, where they kept their money, where they collected and dispensed charity, where they judged disputes—and especially, where they studied sacred texts. Probably not where they prayed, however. At least communal prayer is not referred to in the Theodotus inscription, which mentions several facilities and functions of the synagogue—including the reading of the law, the teaching of the commandments and the provision of lodging—but not prayer. The Hebrew term for synagogue is beth knesset, house of assembly. Synagogue (synagoge) is a Greek word that means the same thing. As Lee Levine, a specialist on ancient synagogues, puts it in a recent exhaustive (748 pages) study, the term synagogue “was bereft of any religious connotation … The existence of [communal prayer] at this time is far from clear.”³ Another Greek word, proseuche, means house of prayer and was applied to buildings outside the Holy Land (in the diaspora), where it is more likely that communal prayer was a feature.

With this background, let’s look at the structure near Jericho that Netzer claims is the oldest synagogue excavated in the Land of Israel.⁴ The structure developed in three stages in the early first century B.C. It was destroyed by a major earthquake in 31 B.C. and never rebuilt. No one disputes the dating. Netzer is an expert excavator and the evidence is clear. The question is the building’s function.

The building sits just outside what was once a magnificent winter palace of the Hasmonean kings, Jewish rulers of Judea from 142 to 37 B.C. At this time Jericho was a Jewish city, a prosperous agricultural center and a fashionable winter resort with an abundance of water, warm winter temperatures and proximity to Jerusalem (where it sometimes snows in winter). The Hasmonean palace, alongside the Wadi Qelt, which runs from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, boasted magnificent reception halls, lush formal gardens and two impressively large swimming pools. A row of about ten houses, which, according to Netzer, probably housed the chief officials of the palace, was on the other side of the purported synagogue.

Look at the plan of the “synagogue” in its three phases. In the first phase, the main hall did not exist. Whether the building was a synagogue in phase 1 is a question even in Netzer’s mind. In phase 2, the main hall was added on the west, along with an important row of rooms on the south. In phase 3, an equally important addition was constructed even farther to the west. At this time a wall was dismantled, a pillar was shifted and a corner of the building (including the ceiling) was eliminated. This required a major operation; there must have been a good reason for it, but as yet we don’t know what it was.

The main hall of the building was more than 50 feet long and more than 35 feet wide, measured on the inside. Twelve pillars enclosed the space on all four sides. Like all construction that we know of in this area, the walls of the building were mud bricks on top of unworked stones. The walls were then coated with plaster. Even the columns were made in this way. Some of the plaster on the columns has survived. The plaster tells us something about the building: Palatial and official rooms were coated with lime plaster; storerooms 054and workshops, with mud plaster. The surviving plaster in the building is lime plaster. According to Netzer, when it was in use, “The entire building was undoubtedly coated with white lime plaster.”

That it was an important public building is clear, not only from the plaster, but from the architecture of it. But was it a synagogue?

The first clue is in the row of three rooms south of the main hall, built at the same time as the main hall (during phase 2). In the largest of the three rooms is a ritual bath, or mikveh. It consists of two pools, one with steps for immersion and the other, called an otzar (reserve) for the ritually pure water required for a valid mikveh. Water in a mikveh must be standing rainwater or other water that has flowed naturally, as opposed to being drawn or carried to the immersion pool. Contact with sufficient water that has flowed naturally, however, will purify the drawn water in the immersion pool. Hence, the otzar with its supply of pure water. A small channel connects the otzar to the immersion pool. The other two small rooms in this row of three rooms were probably for changing and bathing.

The second clue that this building was a synagogue comes from the addition in the third stage. It is a triclinium or Hellenistic-Roman-style dining room. It includes a U-shaped (or three-sided) bench on which the diners reclined. In order to add the triclinium, certain changes, as already noted, had to be made in the main hall. Part of the western wall was dismantled (in phase 3, there was no wall between the main hall and the triclinium) and the blocking pillar was moved a few feet to the north, thus providing a visual connection between the main hall and the triclinium. The bench is about 4.5 feet wide. Food could be served from a walkway more than 2 feet wide behind the U of benches.

What remains may not look like a triclinium, except to the practiced eye. Triclinia are well known in the Roman world, but rare in Palestine. There are a number of them, however, in the winter palaces at Jericho.

Adjacent to the triclinium is a triangular room that Netzer says was probably a kitchen. A podium in the right-angled corner bears evidence of fire and suggests that it may once have supported a stove.

Finally, Netzer found a strange niche in the northeast corner of the main hall. Its floor was 1.5 feet lower than the floor of the aisle adjoining it (the floor of the nave and the floor of the niche were at the same height, the aisles being higher than the central floor; a small area in front of the niche was also at this low level). Initially, the niche contained a wooden cupboard, according to Netzer; then later, this was replaced by a cupboard made of fieldstones and mud divided into two compartments, one above the other. The lower one, Netzer suggests, could have served as a geniza, or storage space for worn-out holy documents. A wooden plate (a 055sort of a horizontal door) could have covered the lower space in front of the niche. When removed, it would have given access to the geniza. The upper compartment was larger. Netzer speculates that this was used to store the Torah scrolls and other books. Netzer points to a niche that also appears in the Gamla synagogue.

Is this enough to identify the Jericho building as a synagogue? Netzer claims the most important basis for his conclusion is its similarity to the Gamla synagogue, although the Jericho structure is somewhat smaller. But, like the Gamla synagogue, the Jericho hall has pillars on all four sides and also an associated mikveh. But there is more. Based on the difference in elevation between the side aisles and the central nave, Netzer concludes that benches existed along the walls of the Jericho building. The Gamla synagogue (and many later synagogues) clearly had benches. If there were benches at Jericho, this is another similarity with Gamla. In both cases, people could walk behind the benches. Netzer estimates that 125 people could sit on the benches at Jericho, compared to 430 at Gamla. In Jericho, as at Gamla, a water channel bisected the main hall, feeding a small basin “attached” to the water channel. Netzer suggests this basin could have been used for ritual washing of the hands, something that is done to this day by observant Jews before eating and praying. Moreover, the water channel continues and then terminates in the mikveh in Jericho and apparently at Gamla as well.

Is this enough to identify the building at Jericho as a synagogue? You can decide for yourself. Netzer has no doubt. Others are not quite so sure. As Levine says in his recent book, “If Netzer’s identification of the building is correct, it would constitute the earliest known synagogue from Second Temple Judaea … Perhaps future excavations will allow him to further solidify this suggestion.”⁵

At the same time Netzer plumps for this building as a synagogue, he attempts to refute that designation for another building so identified by its Italian excavators.⁶ The building excavated by Virgilio Corbo and Stanislao Loffreda, located at Migdal (Magdala) north of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, dates to the first century B.C., about the same time as the Jericho structure. The Migdal structure is quite small, so small that even the excavators call it a “mini-synagogue.” Its interior measurements are almost square (unusual for a synagogue)—only 18 feet by 21 feet, about the size of a large living room in a modern home.

As is common in Galilee, the structure is built of basalt stone blocks. Inside, columns line three of the walls. The corner columns are double, as if two columns coming from two different directions bumped together, creating a heart shape when sliced laterally. These heart-shaped columns are common in later Galilean synagogues. On the fourth wall of the Migdal building are five steps that the excavators interpret as benches.

On three sides, between the columns and the walls, is a water channel. West of the structure is a spring that still flows. From this spring, water flowed through a channel under a street adjacent to the building and then through the wall of the building and directly into the internal channel. Excess water flowed onto the floor and then discharged outside via outlets above the original floor of the building.

The excavators say the building had two clear phases. They interpret only the original phase as a synagogue. As a result of a flood in the area, the building was converted, they say, into a springhouse, a structure used for cool storage of food or for drawing water. The later floor is a foot higher than the earlier floor. 056And it was during the reconstruction, according to Corbo and Loffreda, that the U-shaped water channel flanking the hall on three sides was added.

The excavators have had some difficulty in locating the entrance to the building. They surmise that it must have been on the eastern wall between the bottom of the steps and the first column.

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Netzer thinks the Italian excavators have it all wrong.⁷ The basic architecture just doesn’t fit a synagogue. The columns are only 3 feet from the wall, creating aisles too narrow to be usable. And the building certainly seems small for a synagogue. Its size conforms much more closely to the needs of a springhouse. Moreover, after studying the excavators’ plans and photographs, Netzer concludes that the water channel was an integral part of the original building. He also has found evidence that parts of the water channel were removed and reused in phase 2, further indicating that it was already there in phase 1.^d And Netzer is certain that the original entrance was a broad opening above the steps, on the northern side of the building, although the threshold and jambs from this entrance have been looted.

Most importantly, the steps that the excavators interpret as benches are not benches at all, Netzer claims, but simply steps leading down to the level of the water channels. The treads on the steps are not wide enough (less than a foot) to be benches. The risers vary in height, but the highest is less than 10 inches. Moreover, in all the synagogues with benches from the pre-destruction period as well as post-destruction synagogues of the so-called Galilean-type^e—and there are many—the benches line three or four walls, not just one, as at Migdal. In short, Netzer claims, the Migdal building was not a synagogue at all, but a springhouse where the city’s residents came to draw water, in phase 1 as well as in phase 2.

Outside the apparent springhouse, the excavators found a stepped pool. Netzer agrees this is a ritual bath, or mikveh. Indeed Netzer has located at least four mikva’ot in the area around the reputed springhouse—most appropriate since running water is usually needed for a valid mikveh. But in this case, the mikva’ot do not signify that the adjacent building is a synagogue, says Netzer.

So that’s the case—or rather the cases—for and against. You be the jury.

Israeli archaeologist Ehud Netzer claims he has found the oldest synagogue building in the Biblical Land of Israel, near Jericho. Not everyone agrees that it’s a synagogue, however. Meanwhile, Italian excavators Virgilio Corbo and Stanislao Loffreda say they have found a synagogue about as old near the Sea of Galilee, at Migdal (sometimes called Magdala). Netzer, however, doesn’t think the Migdal building is a synagogue at all. We’ll present the evidence and let you decide. It’s not easy identifying a synagogue dating to the time when the Temple still stood in Jerusalem (the Second Temple was destroyed by the […]